


my beloved in amber

by zetaophiuchi (ryuujitsu)



Series: je ne sais où on s'en va [1]
Category: SKAM (France), SKAM (TV) RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Explicit Sexual Content, Future Fic, Infidelity, JoMax, M/M, Miscommunication, Pining, RPF, Resolved Sexual Tension, The Emotional Intelligence of a Pair of Rocks, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:21:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22203724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryuujitsu/pseuds/zetaophiuchi
Summary: A chance encounter, a Seoul hotel room, and some late realizations. Set five or six years in a somewhat unlikely future.
Relationships: Axel Auriant/Maxence Danet-Fauvel
Series: je ne sais où on s'en va [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1650046
Comments: 12
Kudos: 53





	my beloved in amber

**Author's Note:**

> Couldn’t let [FLWhite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FLWhite/pseuds/FLWhite) have all the fun. (Many thanks, as usual, to FLWhite for their suggestions and edits.)
> 
> I feel as though I should throw in a special disclaimer for this particular fic—while I do in fact ship these real-life human beings and think they’d have a grand old time if they got together IRL, hint hint nudge nudge have-another-fic-for-the-OTP-altar, I don’t think this fic is at all representative of what might happen in real life. Consider it its own unhappy splinter universe. Sequel pending.
> 
> On a more positive note(book), Simenon’s _Seven Little Crosses in a Notebook_ is amazing—I recommend it!

He does more movies in the years after _SKAM France_: another fan-funded Dark Lord, another juvenile delinquent, a moody art student who seems in many ways to be Eliott Demaury, redux, in a universe where he ended up alone. After the trauma of the art student, he parts ways with Elisabeth and his agency and launches his post-30s career in a different direction. He goes from villains to vigilantes to a village idiot, angel-plagued and medieval. This last performance is universally panned.

The Seoul trip comes in a lull, a few weeks after he’s wrapped up filming on a new Netflix adaptation of Maigret’s _Sept petites croix dans un carnet_, playing the belligerent drunk to Corentin Fila’s sleepless André Lecoeur.

“It will do you good,” his agent Lucas says, “to be among friends.” The sentiment is echoed by his sister, who’s moved back to Haute-Normandie, and his mother, who books him a first-class seat on Air France with her friends and family discount. And, indeed, a small contingent of longtime Korean fans is there to receive him at the airport, clapping and waving banners printed with the face of a younger man. He smiles and signs autographs, running his hand self-consciously over his shorn scalp.

It’s been almost six months since his last serious photoshoot. He put on weight to play the drunk, learned to box, shaved his head. He feels unrecognizable and unbeautiful, but he hasn’t forgotten how to pose. He leaves the airport with his arms full of flowers.

The weather in Seoul that October is hot and humid, the new unseasonable norm, though he barely notices it: a driver collects him before he can pass through the automatic doors and sweeps him to Hongdae, where he experiences the humidity as a brief, damp caress on his cheekbones. The glow of the sunset turns the street into a ribbon of gold. Another set of automatic doors slide open and reveal to him the pink and blue pastel suede of the furniture in the hotel lobby, where, at the white crescent moon of the concierge’s desk, a Frenchman is enquiring in stilted English about the best wine bars in the neighborhood.

“And souvenir shops, too,” the Frenchman says, “if you have any suggestions…”

_Lucas, you bastard_, he thinks, of his agent, a dark-haired cherub of the same type as one David Hourrègue. _Among friends_, he thinks. He forgets his luggage and the chill of the air conditioning. He forgets himself. He starts forward.

“_Salut_,” he says.

Axel turns, mid-sentence, crosses the lobby and seizes him, pummels him, almost, with his fists, kisses the clammy air by his cheeks: “Maxence, my God, fuck, what are you doing here?”

_I ask myself the same_, he thinks. He explains, with a truly unnecessary amount of detail, about the deal with Lucky Chouette, the collaboration with Hoyoung Chi, the new line of menswear designs. “Winter coats, mostly,” he concludes, with a self-deprecating shrug that ripples down his arms, “so I’ll still fit…”

Axel makes a noise like a spitting cat. “Bullshit,” he says. “Fuck, you look…” He’s drinking Maxence in with his eyes, which are, as ever, as fathomless as the Atlantic. Little tremors are shaking Maxence’s legs. He must be tired, he thinks. He must be delirious. He remembers his suitcase, suddenly, as he thinks about finding something to lean on.

A doorman brings it in, all smiles.

“Just arrived, eh?” Axel says. “Just now? The nine o’clock flight, was it? We were on the one o’clock. Oh, think: we could have flown over together. Like old times. Fuck, it was cold that January.”

They seem to remember it simultaneously, the cold rub of the tip of Axel’s nose against his cheek: colder still, his lips, fogging with white breath, as he stole a kiss in the dark. Before the fishcake skewers, even before the soju, floating on the high of the season five press tour. They look at each other and remember the clutch of Axel’s fingers.

“We?” Maxence says.

Axel hesitates. “My girlfriend is doing some shoots here, too,” he says finally. “My girlfriend,” he says again, more firmly, “Maxine.”

“Maxine,” Maxence repeats, and Axel grins through his embarrassment.

“That’s right,” he says. “Bouchard-Roy. Québecoise. _I’m _on vacation, though; it’s all leisure for me. And you?” he asks, and then he clears his throat. “Ah, sorry, right.”

He shuffles to the side without another word and stands there, pleasantly blank, as Maxence checks himself in.

Axel’s been in a handful of movies since _SKAM_—Maxence has seen all but one, alone or with friends—poignant minor roles that received massive acclaim, especially in Le Figaro. He’s starred in several plays, too. In the months before they began to drift, Maxence went to see one of them, applauding boisterously with the rest in a back row. He’d greeted Axel at the theater door, and then, seeing his chagrin, never did it again.

“And you,” Axel repeats, trailing him to the elevator, “I mean—what I mean is—are you here with someone?”

There’s nothing in Axel’s face but warm, polite interest. But in his voice Maxence hears strain, hears it or desires to hear it and thus conjures it, a magical rasp.

“Just work,” he says. “Just me.”

Axel seems ready to follow him to his door and beyond, but at the last moment he turns away with a little wave of his fingers. “I’m here all week,” he says, with a heartiness that Maxence, dehydrated and sore, finds almost insulting. “Message me when you’re free. Instagram, text, whatever. My number is the same.”

He doesn’t message, though, unsure how to break the wall of silence that has built itself up between them, and Axel finds him three days later at the rooftop bar of the hotel, leaning against the railing with a sidecar dangling precariously from his fingers. Maxine’s on Axel’s arm, a very young woman of ambiguous race with big green eyes and a heavy black fringe, ironed flat. She, like Maxence, is comfortably dressed in a white t-shirt and deceptively simple olive-colored cargo pants. (“Models,” Axel says, rolling his eyes amiably.) Unlike Maxence, her toenails are painted neon yellow. She seems to wiggle them at him in greeting. Axel kisses his cheek—full contact, this time, he notes—and Maxine shakes his hand. Her English is better than her French, which is thin and nasal, peppered with New World slang.

She’s drinking a seltzer with a thin sliver of lime, and it comes out that she’s only eighteen, will be nineteen in a week.

“Come on,” Maxence says, “you can’t buy one for her? Why don’t I…”

“I never drink when I’m working,” Maxine says. She met Axel on the set of _Si tu as du temps_, where she played a barkeep’s daughter. Maxence feigns ignorance. He remembers the movie quite clearly, and thinks to himself, _Fuck, they barely had three lines together._

“That makes one of us,” Axel says.

“You don’t go by Max, too, do you?” Maxine says, and Maxence shakes his head. After some gentle, circling chatter about Tibaeg and K-pop and banana milk and a group selfie above the glitter of the city where Axel musses his own hair and sticks out his tongue, Maxine excuses herself: she has an early shoot in the morning.

“I don’t miss those days,” Maxence says, as though they are long behind him. Perhaps they are. God knows how his performance in _Sept petites croix_ will be received. Maybe he can get the Auriant-Blots’ pet movie critic to put in a good word for him.

Maxine slips away with another wiggle of her toes and fingers. Over the course of the conversation, it’s come out, too, that she and Axel have booked separate rooms.

“It’s our first trip together,” Axel says, looking awkward. “And anyway, her agency, they…”

“Has she come to visit you in your room, at least?” Maxence says, behind the lip of his drink. _Nineteen_, he thinks, remembering the wide green eyes beneath the dark swoop of smoky shadow and false lashes. _A baby. _“Or vice versa?”

Defensively, Axel says, “I was nineteen when we met.”

“Twenty,” Maxence says calmly. “You were twenty.”

“Maxe—”

He throws back the rest of his drink, and Axel’s, too, plucking it from Axel’s suddenly limp fingers. “Let’s see it, then,” he says. “Your lonely room.”

In the bathroom, on a speckled melamine tray, hotel staff have laid out samples of skincare products: six flat white packets, two pink tubes, two green face masks. Axel has brought his own clear blue sack of toiletries, and he notes with a sensation somewhere between a jolt and a creak that Axel is still using the L’Occitane mini-serum he gave him all those years ago. Or maybe it’s a new bottle.

Axel’s window faces west, into the empty white wall of the building opposite. They’re only five stories up, Maxence thinks, but they might as well be on the moon. The power of soundproofing.

“Sorry,” he says, into the dim blue quiet. “I’m a little drunk.”

“You!” Axel snorts. “I don’t believe it.”

“I am,” he insists. “My liver’s out of practice. They put me on a strict diet to—” he flexes “—to build these. For the f-film.” He stammers suddenly, wondering what Axel thinks of Netflix movies. _He’s_ never been in one. They shot it in two weeks, with foul-tasting artificial snow. “It’s Simenon,” he clarifies. “Seven little crosses in—”

“In a notebook,” Axel says. “I know. Robin forwarded me the casting announcement. I bet you’re fantastic. I’ll definitely watch it.”

“Will you?”

“Of course,” Axel says. “I’ve watched everything, you know,” he says. “Everything, all of it. Before and after _SKAM_.”

“And you,” he says, looking away, swallowing, “what have you been working on?”

Axel says, “Did you come to my room to ask me about my work?”

He smiles at that, turns to see that Axel is smiling back, tentative. “No,” he admits.

“Because we could have stayed on the roof,” Axel says. “For that.”

_It’s the past I want to stay in_, he thinks, and he looks down at his two muscled arms as Axel steps between them.

Between the panels and the dinners and the interviews and the autographs, they hadn’t had any time to themselves the last time they were in Seoul, until, finally, on the last night, adhering to some crackpot theory of Axel’s that intentional sleep deprivation was the way to beat impending jetlag, they had stayed up until dawn, eating, drinking, walking, watching YouTube videos, listening to music. Talking about nothing of importance at all. Axel had kissed him at the start of the night’s adventure, and his lips had landed off-center, between lip and jaw, in the territory of plausible deniability.

Some thirty hours later, saying their farewells in Charles de Gaulle—Axel’s girlfriend had come to collect him—Axel had kissed him again, feverishly and with great enthusiasm, on both cheeks.

“See you,” he’d said, blithely waving Maxence away to the mercy of the ongoing Paris train-bus reroute.

It was six months until they met again, in Avignon, at the side door of Laurette Théâtre. His palms still felt the ricochet of applause. He'd gone to put his hands on Axel's shoulders, just to hold him. Axel had brushed him away, with a movement that was more of a twitch than a full-blown gesture. It was July and sweltering, but Axel's face had been white and bloodless as he said, "Why are you here?"

There were hoary gray heads at the front of the greeting line, but then a parade of young faces; as he'd skipped by he'd heard a murmur: _Maxence, it's Maxence!_

"I'll go, sorry," he'd said, in an undertone, jerking his head at a restaurant across the street. He'd sat by an open window and ordered a cold beer, waiting. Axel never came to find him.

Eleven months later, they collided at Pride, neither of them _parrains_ this time. Just an ordinary attendee, in Maxence’s case. Axel, on the other hand, had barely had time to say hello. He was giving interview after interview about his upcoming role in the film adaptation of Philippe Besson’s _Lie with Me_.

_Is there something you’re trying to tell us?_ Richard, a weekend host for France Bleu, had joked.

Axel had demurred: _You have to remember that we actors are not our characters. _Besides, he wasn’t playing the protagonist but a former lover’s son.

Richard: _The spitting image of his father._

_In all aspects but height_, Axel said, self-deprecating.

Richard, needling: All _aspects? His sexuality, too?_

_Who knows?_

He _is_ a little drunk, and dazed, and he has some trouble with his drawstrings. It takes him a moment, too, frowning at Axel’s wince, before he remembers to remove his rings. He twists them over his knuckles and tumbles them onto the nightstand. One shake, two, clatter. A ring falls into the carpet. Axel stalls his retrieval of it, catching his hands, threading their fingers together.

Axel whispers, “You haven’t changed.”

But he has, patently, he’s bigger, his thighs thicker; he uses them to pin Axel down and straddle him, pressing Axel’s hands into the mattress. Not too hard, though, not hard enough to discourage Axel from raising his chin to meet him, smashing their mouths together. They make a sound together too, nearly lost in the squeak of the springs, a joint murmur of relief.

You’re the one who hasn’t changed, he thinks. There’s that mole, as inky and tantalizing as ever, adorning the base of Axel’s throat, daring Maxence, goading him; the wild hair spreading over the pillow; those spots at Axel’s wrists and ribs and nipples that make his breath hitch when Maxence nibbles at them.

He lets go of Axel’s hands, and Axel runs his palms greedily over Maxence’s body, kneading at his shoulders, his back, his hips.

There’s lube in his bag of toiletries; he mentions it to Maxence in a shy little mumble. His cock bobs above his stomach, beading moisture. Maxence gives it a long, loving stroke from root to tip before he staggers into the bathroom in search of the bottle.

“It’s clear,” Axel calls to him as he rummages, dropping all pretense of shyness, “there’s a blue label, it’s…” His voice trickles away as Maxence emerges. Then he clears his throat and says, “And a condom, there’s a condom in my wallet.”

“_Doux Jésus_,” Maxence mutters.

Axel laughs at him. “Still immersed in your medieval role, I see,” he says. “Well, it’s there, so—” he gurgles suddenly “—so if you wanna put your _sweet little Jesus_ in the crib—where he belongs—”

Maxence groans. “Fuck. That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard. I’m going to shrivel up.”

“Sorry,” Axel says, “couldn’t resist,” and he hisses as Maxence breaches him. “Oh,_ fuck_.”

He closes his eyes at the sheer sensation of it, the burning heat of Axel’s body around his finger. When he looks up, he sees Axel watching him, mouth open, panting.

He gets his own mouth working on the second try. “Where’s your wallet?”

Axel squirms. He jerks his head toward the coat hanging on the door.

“Pocket,” he says, “left pocket.”

Maxence withdraws with a squelch. He drags his finger down Axel’s thigh, smearing lube over the taut golden skin, through the fine golden hair, all the way to the kneecap. Axel twitches, swears quietly under his breath.

He’s almost afraid to turn, as though Axel will disappear if he does, or make a run for it, sprinting naked into the hotel corridor, hiding his nakedness with his bundled clothing, pop art wall sconces shimmering pink and blue down his shining streak of lube. Quality, he thinks. It’s silky between his fingertips: nothing but the best for M. Auriant. He keeps his eyes fixed on Axel and shuffles backward over the carpet until his shoulders hit the woolen expanse of Axel’s coat.

He breaks eye contact to fish the wallet out. The condom is in the billfold, sandwiched between one leather edge and a wad of ten thousand won notes—and a ticket stub, a fucking ticket stub, because Axel belongs to another century. The ticket is for Maxence’s medieval peasant, poor bewitched Jehenin of Chastenay. A matinee. Wednesday, the seventh of August, at 11:30 in the morning, at some indie cinema the name of which he naturally doesn’t recognize.

“Find it?”

“Yeah.” He tucks the stub back into the wallet and the wallet back into the coat and returns to the bed, feeling like he’s wading through seawater.

Axel’s waiting with his knees bent and his feet spread wide, utterly unashamed, brushing his cock idly with his fingertips. The hand jerks and tightens as Maxence bends over him and sucks the flushed pink cockhead into his mouth. But he only gets a few licks in before Axel’s other hand is at the back of his neck, squeezing hard: “No, fuck, don’t, I’ll come.”

He lets himself be nudged away. He doesn’t quite climb back onto the bed, just leans over it, over Axel. He finds the lube again and slicks his fingers up even more.

“It’s nearly empty,” he says, weighing it in his palm. “You’ve been busy. You and Maxine?”

Axel doesn’t answer; maybe he can’t. He screws up his eyes and bites his lip as Maxence works his fingers back inside.

“You know,” Maxence continues, in a mostly successful attempt at a conversational tone, “when we met in the lobby, I thought you said Max_ime_ at first. I was shocked.” He makes his voice lilt. He makes it light and teasing. “It was shocking. But she’s very pretty.”

“We’re not dating,” Axel blurts. “Sorry. I don’t know why I said that. I don’t know what I—she’s a friend of Leo’s. A friend of Leo’s younger sister, actually. We’re all here together. I lied. I panicked. I’m sorry.”

He pulls back. “Seriously, dude?”

“Sorry,” Axel repeats. “I didn’t want you to think…I…” He wriggles. “Maxe, please, God.”

“Sorry,” he says in turn. He crooks his fingers and dips to kiss the corner of Axel’s mouth, stretched open in a gasp.

He remembers the first time they did this—merged their bodies and rocked together. It wasn’t long after Season 4 had wrapped; it was the day after the wrap-up party, in fact, and the day after Axel had decided to spend the night. Curiosity had gotten the better of them months ago, but the morning after the party, Axel had woken up and said he wanted to go all the way.

That day had been like a dream: the early autumn sunlight was hazy, stretching long and golden into the afternoon. There was silence from the church bells, and even the noise of traffic had quieted. Paris held its breath and waited to exhale. While Axel dozed and texted and dozed some more, he had rushed to the Monoprix down the street, returning with a full-sized container of personal lube; the condoms were already in his bedside drawer, a gag gift from Simon. Then Axel had showered and flung himself back into Maxence’s bed, braced on his hands and knees, his face in a pillow, a deep red flush spreading between his shoulders, which were moving quickly in time with his rapid breaths. The sheets he was crouched on had been dirtied the night before.

“I’m ready,” Axel had said, and just as firmly, “no, wait.”

“Which is it?” His voice was hoarse with tenderness.

“Slowly, please,” Axel said. “I’ve never—you know.” He’d sat up for a moment and glared over his shoulder at Maxence. “And neither have you. _Have_ you? Really? With whom?”

He’d been on the verge of an apology; he remembers that now, with some bewilderment. An apology: why? He’d deflected instead. “If it bothers you,” he’d said, “I’ll be Eliott. It’ll be Eliott’s first time.”

He doesn’t remember the expression on Axel’s face; he must have been looking away. He remembers that the bells had tolled and Axel had scoffed.

“You don’t think, on the _péniche_…”

“Without lube? Ouch.”

“Pain is no obstacle,” Axel had declared, and the declaration was ludicrous as it filtered thinly into the pillow. He’d gotten back into the same kneeling position as though Maxence had clapped a slate board and announced another take, his body almost rigid with tension. “Pain is nothing,” he’d said, “they’re so crazy for each other, crazy in love. They’d probably try it with spit and water. Hey. I’m ready.”

“That’s my Lucas,” he’d said.

Laughter ripples in the corridor. Maxence returns to Seoul, to the faint latex sheen of his cock in his hand, and says, “Do you still want—”

“Please,” Axel says, and in the same breath, “Is there enough? God, I hope there is.”

“There’s enough.” His voice is as dry and warped as driftwood. He squeezes the remainder out over himself and closes his eyes against the obscene squish of it, and then he kneels over Axel and spreads him with his fingers.

“Maxe—_Maxe_.”

He’d been worried about staying hard, like a fifty-year-old man, like Simenon’s alcoholic, but he’s as stiff as steel, there’s no problem here. Lasting is another problem: the real problem. He thinks about Maxine as he presses in, gritting his teeth and fighting against the clench of Axel around him, the ragged noises Axel is making beneath him, as though Maxence is piercing him to the core—Maxine, her flaking mascara, mathematics, that fucking Le Monde review—

_Without doubt, he has the face of an angel. Framed within a glory of honey-blond locks, his beauty is unearthly—and ultimately brittle. Indeed, Danet-Fauvel only truly shines when he has someone to play against. _

“Oh, fuck,” Axel says, “Maxence, Maxence, fuck.” He wraps a trembling hand around his cock and begins to pump.

Maxence regrets that they have already gotten to this point, that he’s already teetering on the brink. He wishes he had taken his time. He wishes for the stamina of an Olympic athlete. In another minute it will be over, and they’ll go their separate ways, moving farther and farther apart on either side of a heavy gray veil.

“Please!”

He startles as Axel’s fingertips slide past his ear. There are tears starting at the corners of Axel’s eyes, which are fixed on his, wide and staring; Axel’s face is red with strain, and the red is spreading, across his chest, the tops of his shoulders. His fingernails scrape at the nape of Maxence’s neck. His right hand is a blur. There’s spit shining bright on his parted lips as he breathes, over and over, _Please, please._

“_Fuck_,” he bites out. He can feel Axel twitching around him, tightening. He speeds up and stutters and then loses his rhythm altogether.

“I,” Axel starts to gasp, tensing, “Maxence, I’m,” and Maxence bends him in half and kisses him, blindly, swallowing down his groan.

Eventually, they stop panting; they gather themselves. He tickles Axel’s foot, and Axel, crushed beneath him, mutters against his collarbone:

“My back.”

He pulls out slowly, hissing, and ties off the condom. Axel goes to the window. He tries to heave it open and discovers that it’s bolted shut.

“Well, fuck,” Axel says, “I guess we’ll just marinate.” He leans against the sill and rubs at the small of his back. “Oof,” he says, and he grins, seemingly to himself. “We’re climbing a mountain in the morning—what timing.”

_Don’t go_, he nearly says. _Stay with me. _He rolls onto his side. “Sounds fun,” he says.

“Want to come?”

His heart pounds. “I can’t,” he says, “my flight’s at noon.”

“Ah.” Axel’s gazing down into the alley, his head partially obscured by the curtain; all Maxence can see is an errant tawny tuft and the fixed white edge of his grin. “That’s too bad.”

He dresses haphazardly, pulling his t-shirt on inside-out. Axel wraps himself in a white hotel robe as plush as a cloud. The clock on the nightstand reads 2:53. “Well,” Axel says, as they stand at the door, Maxence bathed in the pink light of the sconces, Axel in blue gloom, “thanks. That was—”

_God, no, please_, Maxence thinks.

And Axel spares him; Axel is merciful; he doesn’t say _nice_. He trails off and looks at Maxence with his enormous eyes, searching. In the light of the sconces, his entire body looks flushed: chest, cheeks. His eyes glow. He says, “Good night.”

“Good night.”

At the elevator bay, he considers going back. _Fuck the mountain. Fuck your friends. Let me hold you until dawn. _But he’s already forgotten Axel’s room number. The rooms stretch down the hallway, a row of blue doors. The elevator arrives. He bows his head and steps in.

He’d intended to shower; he sets an alarm and goes to sleep instead, waking long enough to roll himself into a taxi. He sleeps for the full duration of the return flight, and he continues sleeping, in Paris, almost sixteen hours in one go. There’s a message from Axel when he wakes, a picture of Axel’s squinting, grinning, sun-reddened face in front of a panoramic view of Seoul. _Bukhansan, _his message reads. _840 meters. It was good seeing you._

Nothing else, Maxence thinks, no insinuation. Not even a wink. He replies with equal blandness: _You as well._

He goes to the bakery and returns to find his girlfriend in his apartment, watering his plants.

“Hi, baby,” she says. “You must be jetlagged to hell.”

He stares at her as though she’s a fascinating stranger. Once upon a time, he supposes, she was. Her name is Mathilde Gouin; she’s a makeup artist. He’d chatted her up at a photoshoot while she dusted gold on his eyelids and painted sunbursts at his temples; later, she’d written her number on the back of his hand in deep purple eyeliner. They’d dated casually and then not so casually for a year and a half, long enough for Agathe to start joking about rings. (“Don’t give her one of yours by accident.”) As a sort of concession, he’d made her a present of a spare key. He’d texted her just once in Seoul, and she hadn’t seemed to mind.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he says, to the stranger in his kitchen. “It’s finished. I’m sorry.”

“What?”

He repeats himself.

Mathilde goes pale, goes teary. She sets down the drinking glass she’s using as a watering can. “What are you saying?”

“I slept with someone.”

“But Maxence, I know about Joris,” she says. “It’s not a problem, Joris.”

“It wasn't Joris.”

He watches her face change. Disbelief, more tears. “You’re a pig, Maxence, you…”

Eventually, he persuades her to leave. She slams the door. He locks it after her—pointlessly, he realizes, since she still has the key—and finishes watering the plants. He texts Joris.

“Six years I’ve watched you dancing around,” Joris says, arriving at Maxence’s apartment an hour later, a bottle of wine tucked under his arm, “six fucking years, have some pity on me, why don’t you. Fuck. Give me your phone. I’ll call him. I’ll tell him myself how you feel. Fuck. The two of you.”

He distracts Joris with a hand on his thigh. “Hey,” he says. “I asked you here to console me.”

“It’s called tough love,” Joris says, but he drops the subject and leans in. All of a sudden Maxence changes his mind; he turns his head away, and the evening’s consolation takes the form of two joints and the first hour of _De battre mon cœur s'est arrêté_.

His phone chimes. It’s Simon, commiserating—_I heard from Natalia. Is it true, you slept with someone in Seoul? A model? Naughty._

He sighs. “I’ll have to move again.”

“Why’s that?”

“She still has a key.”

“Mathilde’s not the vengeful type,” Joris says. “She put up with a lot, Mathilde. Lucky you, Maxence, you’re popular with those of us who like to suffer.” He scoffs. “Move again, fuck, are you kidding? Just get your lock changed.”

“Right.”

Joris refills their glasses and sets them precariously on the nightstand, which is crowded with succulents and magazines and Maxence’s copy of _Lie with Me_, as yet unfinished. “Moving, what an ordeal. I don’t know why you left your last apartment at all.”

He taps his fingers along to the Toccata in E minor. Maxence lies down amid the sound of gunfire and closes his eyes.

_Seven Little Crosses _is released two weeks before Christmas Day, to a smattering of praise. The word ‘flashy’ is bandied about. ‘Convoluted,’ too. His skulking is admired, as is his physique. A Buzzfeed writer puts together an article consisting entirely of screenshots of his and Corentin Fila’s faces and numerous lascivious exclamations in capital letters. (He sends this to Corentin, who replies, succinctly, _Fuck._) Lucas calls to congratulate him and asks if he’d be willing to consider a role in an upcoming remake of _Belphegor_.

“Seriously?” he says.

“The lead if I can get it for you,” Lucas says. “By which I mean the hero, not the phantom. Yes? Interested? You can have hair again. I know you’re worried it won’t grow back if we keep shaving it.” He laughs uproariously.

“I’ll think about it,” he says, “sorry, I have another call…”

“I just saw it,” Axel says. “It was brilliant.” He rhapsodizes for a full five minutes—the pacing, the production values. Corentin’s nervous twitch. “I thought it was a nice touch,” he says, “the way you held the bottle.”

A weak left-handed grip betraying an old war injury—a clue not included in the novel and one of the more controversial additions in the adaptation. At least according to diehard Simenon fans, who have all crawled out of the woodwork to offer their opinions. He's been reading the internet comments obsessively even though he promised Lucas he wouldn't. “I can’t take credit,” he says, “that was entirely Martine’s idea.” Martine, the director, whose first words to him on set were, _My God, we’ll have to do something about that face._

Lucas is texting him. _They’ve floated Marilyn Lima for the love interest. Wouldn’t that be nice—a little reunion._

“Maxe?”

“Fuck, sorry,” he says. “My agent was texting me. Lucas.”

He hears a sharp intake of breath. Then, softly, with unspeakable tenderness, Axel murmurs, “Eliott.”

It’s like being doused with ice water. He stands up straight in his sister’s living room and stares wildly out the window at the bare winter trees. Some relic, some splinter of Eliott gazes back in his reflection. “No,” he says. “No—no—my agent, Lucas. His name is Lucas. Lucas Renier.”

He rushes to tell Axel about Lucas, about his resemblance to David, his jolliness. About _Belphegor_ and Marilyn. The reunion.

There’s a long silence when he finishes.

Finally, in a strange voice, Axel says, “So it’s fine if it’s Marilyn, is that it?”

“What?”

“Marilyn, Coline, Lula—you’ll work with them again, but not me?” Axel says. “Fuck. It’s a wonder you could stand to touch me at all in Seoul. Thanks for taking pity on me. Thanks for fucking me out of the goodness of your heart.”

“What?” he says. The rug shifts beneath his feet like wet sand. “What?”

“Enjoy your reunion,” Axel says, cold. “With Marilyn. Merry Christmas.”

His phone rings again, and he drops it, thinking, _Lucas can go to hell, and so can I._ He pulls on Agathe’s oversized cardigan and puts his feet into Agathe’s gardening clogs—they’re only a little bit too small—and slams outdoors, into the brown dead lawn, where Agathe and Julie are slogging through leaves. The leaves are soggy underfoot, having frozen and thawed too many times to be crisp, though Julie is trying her best, lifting her little boots and stomping down. Agathe guides her hands.

“What is it?” Agathe says.

“I,” he says, and then he sees that Julie is peering at him, wide-eyed, from behind his sister’s legs. She’s spent the past week staring at him from various hiding spots, having completely forgotten the last time they met, when she was the flower girl at her parents’ wedding and held his index finger all the way down the aisle. Though, to be fair, he appeared in Haute-Normandie looking rather different this Christmas season, his head all bristly.

“Yes, doesn’t your _tonton _look funny in my clothes,” Agathe says. To Maxence, she repeats, “What is it?”

“Nothing,” he says, “nothing, I—I just needed some air.”

“Or a cigarette?” she says, narrowing her eyes at him.

He can feel the blank mask of panic cracking. He smiles; he can’t help it. “No,” he says. “I promise you, no.”

“Then?”

“It’s not a subject for the ears of little girls,” he says. “I’ll go into town, maybe.”

“Dressed like that?”

“Ah, well—”

“At least put on a scarf,” she says, teasing. “And maybe your own shoes. Those clogs are meant for Papa Noël. Aren’t they, Julie?”

“Don’t take my clogs!” Julie shouts.

Leaving his incessantly ringing phone behind and still wearing Agathe’s cardigan, he spends the afternoon at the Christmas market in Le Petit-Quevilly, pleasantly drunk on mulled wine and dazzled by hanging lights. He continues to drink when he returns, standing by the kitchen counter with Agathe while her husband puts Julie to bed: the adults have opened a bottle of cider.

“What was that about, earlier?” Agathe says. “The look on your face—I thought Maman had had an accident.”

“It was nothing,” he says. “News from my agent.” He distracts Agathe by asking after her school friends, the ones who stayed in the suburbs. They’re nearly all married now, he discovers, and one by one they’re all having children. Even Thérèse, who had been the maid of honor at Agathe’s wedding and had sworn up and down that it wasn’t for her.

“It’s too bad about Mathilde,” Agathe says.

He shrugs. “She’ll find someone better.”

He’s only ever told Agathe half of the story. He wonders how she’ll react if he reveals the rest. She’ll scold him, he thinks. On behalf of Mathilde, who adored her, or their mother, who surely raised him better, or maybe even Axel, whose career she still follows. He breathes in, wet, through his mouth.

“Oh, Maxou,” Agathe says. She takes his hand and holds it until her husband emerges from Julie’s bedroom, dangling a sippy cup from his pinky. They’re a unit, Agathe and Pierre: seeing his wife’s expression, Pierre hurries over and gives Maxence a brotherly slap on the back that almost bowls him over.

In June 2020, the month that Agathe and Pierre were married, the South had flooded again, and parts of Italy, too, catastrophically. The news of the floods was just beginning to break when Elisabeth called, practically burbling.

“You’ll never believe this,” she’d said. “They’re making a movie of Besson’s book. You read the copy I sent you? Good. They’re casting for the boyfriend. For Thomas.”

He’d read the first quarter of the book quickly, skimming it, his only lingering impression the awful description of Thomas’ penis, large and white. He wonders what the film will be rated, and whether his copy of the script will arrive with strict instructions to stay out of the sun.

“Jean-Bernard Marlin will direct. Besson is writing the script. And,” Elisabeth had said, gleeful, “you’ll never guess who they’ve chosen for Philippe. What a reunion it’s going to be!”

“I can’t do it,” he’d said, after the shock had passed.

“You’ll be amazing,” she’d said, with great warmth. “I know your chemistry with Axel, I’ve seen it, you’re a shoo-in.”

“It’s not that,” he’d said. “I mean I don’t want it. Thank you, but I don’t want it. I’m tired of this kind of role. The beautiful young man, the destabilizing force.”

Sounding shaken—her rising star had turned awkward—Elisabeth had said, “It’s such an opportunity, Maxence.”

Dutifully, he’d gone to his audition and read with the director, Jean-Bernard, who was playing Axel while Axel performed in Avignon. The next day, they offered him the part. He'd waited an hour to turn it down.

Later, he'd heard through Joris’ grapevine that Axel had negotiated a different role, citing schedule conflicts, and several men had been cast to play the protagonist, Philippe, as he grew old and wistful. Victor Meutelet took the part of Thomas. After multiple delays, the film opened in May of 2022 and received a round of Césars.

That was all, he’d thought; there had been no fallout. Up until that very afternoon, in his sister’s house in Le Grand-Quevilly, he’d never even realized that Axel had known about his refusal; that he had known and had been hurt by it. That his white face at the theater door that summer had been due to something other than a trampled desire for secrecy, that his contact had faded for reasons other than a natural dwindling of interest, that years later the knowledge of Maxence’s refusal had prompted him to lie, to invent a girlfriend, reflexively, to protect himself. That he had bared himself anyway; that he had begged.

His phone displays two missed calls, both from Axel, and, several hours later, a text.

_I apologize for my outburst_, it says. _Please forget I said anything._

_Merry Christmas_, again. _Sincerely._

“Maxou?”

It’s Agathe, tiptoeing into the kitchen in search of a glass of water. She catches him by the window, finishing off the last of the cider, which has gone flat.

“Sorry,” he says, “did I make too much noise?”

“You were quiet as a mouse,” Agathe says. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he says, but he's sure she's seen the telltale gleam in his eyes. He opens the refrigerator, casting a pure yellow beam into the darkness, and peers into it to hide his face. Agathe was busy this afternoon, he sees: there’s dough for sablés chilling in the refrigerator, and a turkey brining, too. Their mother will be here tomorrow, he thinks, all smiles, presents in tow. A mountain of presents for her only grandchild. Surreptitiously, he wipes his eyes and closes the door, straightening up with a bottle of beer.

Agathe looks at him reproachfully.

“Hey, it’s the holidays.” But he leaves the bottle unopened on the countertop, where it glistens in the moonlight. Recalling the lights of the market and the cold but gentle wind through the trees, he says, “It’s peaceful here.”

“And yet you’re champing at the bit to return to Paris,” his sister says. She takes his arm. “Oh, yes,” she says. “Don’t try to deny it. I can see it in your face. And to think you used to be so homesick.”

It’s not Paris he’s sick for, he thinks, but a moment in Paris, a Sunday afternoon, his old apartment, his old bed, and Axel, his laughter softening into a moan. When he was finished, he’d turned Axel over and collapsed against him, and felt him, still hard, wedged between his hip and his navel. Axel’s palms were sweaty on his face, guiding him down to kiss; the name _Eliott _passed between their lips.

He drinks his cider and grimaces at his sister and curls around the pain in his chest. It’s the pain of nostalgia, the exquisiteness of which is tarnished somewhat by the feeling that he’s being foolish, that his precious moment, preserved in amber, polished lovingly year after year, is nothing more than a cheap bead.

_Merry Christmas_, he replies. _It’s already forgotten._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you liked it, please [reblog](https://hallo-catfish.tumblr.com/post/190187543069/my-beloved-in-amber-zetaophiuchi-ryuujitsu)!


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